How to Fertilize Your Flowers | Container Gardening Tips & Maintenance | Window Box Full July Lesson

Hey guys, today I'm going to share with you how we fertilize our window boxes and share a few little maintenance tips along the way. Mixing my fertilizer is actually a pretty simple process. So I always put my fertilizer in nice little containers like this so they're protected from any moisture. I kind of buy in bulk so either a Peters or a Jax will do. You can do just a basic or a bloom booster. Right here we did a bulk Peters so the bag is really large. So today we're just going to kind of scoop some in here. I'll show you how much we're putting in here too. So I do about a tablespoon and I'm just going to go ahead and scoop that into my watering can here. And then we're just going to go ahead and fill up the watering can. While I'm filling it I'm also stirring it with the hose. I don't have an end on this hose because this hose is from last year and it always gets like all that icky gunk inside of it so when you put a hose end on it it kind of just clogs up that end so I just do it this way for now. All right it's all filled and mixed so let's go water some window boxes. So the one thing I always make sure is that I'm watering underneath the foliage. I'm never watering on top. You kind of harm the shape and the formation of those plants. And if you're watering on top every single time you're creating it to just get that mushy like flat top look it just gets used to being matted down. Obviously when it rains that's fine but when you water which is more than what it rains at least for us here in the Midwest we've actually been kind of going through a dry spell but if you're watering more than it's actually raining then that's what truly matters as to where you water and how you water. So underneath the foliage is best and I'll show you how I do that. So I literally just like pick up on the foliage here and kind of insert my watering can into the bottom here and then just go ahead and let it soak. On fertilizing days especially I like to make sure that the window box is dripping from the bottom that's how I know it's been thoroughly watered and watered all the way through and when it's watered all the way through you don't have to water as often. So just literally lifting up and watering underneath. You can see and hear the dripping that's what you want. So then we move on down the line of this window box here. It's a long window box so this window box here takes about four of these watering cans. Right now I'm fertilizing these about every third time that I water which is about once every week and a half. If you don't know when to fertilize really take a look at your plants. I just have this eye for my plants and I'm sure you'll gain an eye for your plants. You know when they look the most vibrant and just sparkly is what I like to say and when they all of a sudden don't have that sparkle you know that's when it's time to fertilize. It's kind of like you know when your skin starts looking dull you know it's time to do a mask. So fertilizing should be a lot easier than this. You shouldn't always have to fertilize through a watering can. Our whole backyard is hooked up with a fertilizing injector. I can show you that as well but it's so much easier because it runs right through the hose but we don't have one up here. So I'm kind of stuck doing it the hard way as you can see but we have been working on trying to make things easier in the garden for work-wise so that way we can focus more on the harvesting and using and really just you know having more fun in the garden rather than just work and I enjoy the work a lot but the fun is also fun. You got to have that too. One more can will do it and I think sometime this year or next year we will get a fertilizing injector just for our front window boxes and containers. It would make it so much easier. They usually run like between two to four hundred dollars so they're not like super cheap but they are so worth it because the one that we have we've had for like three years so it's already paid for itself in the amount of time that it saves to not have to fill these and mix these. All right well now that we're done watering I'm going to go in there and show you a few maintenance tips that we usually do this time of year. I really love how this combination turned out this year. It's very beautiful and bright and it's really filling in quite lovely and we're only coming into the mid-July not even yet so this is actually pretty huge for we're at what July 7th today so this is looking great. We have the Vista Paradise right here in front. Vista Paradise is a variety by Proven Winner and they have all kinds of different colors now featured in the Vista series and it does have this natural mounding habit. You don't really have to pinch it but I like to keep it even more so bushy so I still go ahead because I don't like long runners. I actually like it to just be like solid puffy flowers and that's what you get when you pinch and then you don't get a flat top either so all I'm going to do is kind of share my pinching method. I've shared it in other videos but I always feel like it's an important method to know in order to keep your plants looking nice and lush and full and beautiful. So right here is kind of where I'm talking about you know you're getting kind of that long runner here coming up so all I do is take this part right here off and it just stops it from growing out this way and then allows all the growth along that stem to start growing out so here there's a little growth here there's a little growth there's a growth here and then you can just follow it all the way down and there's all these growths and as those fill in and you do that to all of them they start filling in together which they start entangling in one another which also then creates them to be more wind resistant. When the petunias kind of go in and intertwine with each other after the pinching they kind of grow into each other then they just kind of move together like a big bubble when there's wind. That way they're just not long and straggly even though Vista series doesn't get straggly but it can still get longer and a flat top if you're not careful. I'll show you with an example actually so if you're pinching then you'll never have those types of problems. So that's what I do is I go through and I'm just taking off all of those tips and say you have one that's even longer so like let's just say that this is a really long one you know it's starting to kind of well this one here actually let's do this one here this is actually a perfect one right here. So see how it's getting longer I don't mind that it's going up but say you like it controlled a little bit more and you don't want it covering your coleus in the background what you can do then is you don't have to just take it from the tip because if you take it here then all these growths are going to grow out and kind of cover that coleus so what you can do is come down the line and you can pinch it to wherever you want it to be pinched. I'm going to pinch it right here so we're taking off quite a bit there see and it really doesn't matter where you pinch it because it'll bush out from wherever you do so you don't have to be so picky. Right now I'm using my hands other days I use scissors and I'm not watching where I'm cutting and trimming I just got to go you know there's so many things to maintain and take care of that it there isn't always a lot of time to be so fussy you know sometimes I even just go like this and then one of those buds comes off with it for some of you you're like oh no oh no it's okay they can handle it so there's always going to be more buds more flowers coming so you know we just go ahead and pinch that off and then kind of coming around the side over here now it's starting to fill in really nice along this side so it's filling in and starting to trail. I like where that's headed so I'm actually not going to pinch too much over here except for this one right here it's one of the lower trailing ones it's getting nice and long but I want to pinch it so that way it stays full as it grows long so that way when we get wind you're not going to have just like a longer strand snap off in the wind you want it to kind of build upon each other so I hope that makes sense I actually you know when I was working at my parents garden center this spring I would actually give people private lessons so when they were walking out with these big baskets I'm like do you know how to pinch and they're like oh yeah and then they would show me what they would do which would be just to take one of the dead flowers off you know and I'm like no that's that's not pinching but I can share share with you you know how and then I would you know start showing someone and then before you know it there's like 10 other people surrounding us and they're like what are you doing and so it was really fun and really cool to teach all of these people in person how to maintain their baskets and they were just like so grateful and it was just such good energy and everyone was just having fun because I mean who's going to be moody around flowers you know you got to be happy they make everyone happy so I'm going to give this one a little pincheroo that one too there we go we're just kind of pinching just just going around and pinching and then we're just going to kind of let it go this is the first time I've pinched it since I've planted it actually I take that back I pinched it once right after we planted it and then this is the first time since this coleus here I like I said from the beginning I really don't know the name of this one and I pinched it right when I planted it and as you can see it's not like a super vigorous grower like it's not overtaking anything it's just really getting nice and full and filling in where it needs to so usually with the coleus I would come in here and I would pinch it if it was getting like too tall but this is actually fine for now so I'm gonna leave it until you know I see it getting too tall and reason why I pinch it once it gets too tall because if we get heavy winds out here it could just snap off so when you pinch it it does the same thing that it does with the petunias and it forces all of these growths out because this coleus right here was just one stalk so when I planted it I pinched that little tip and then all of these growths came out and then once they grow up like this this that's when you pinch it when you feel like it's getting too tall or if it's overtaking so you can always control your plants too and then we have the cannas which are like no work whatsoever other than removing dead flowers here's one here so all we do is come in and I snip it all the way down at the bottom I don't have my snippers but that's what I do I just go all the way down to the bottom and remove that off of there over here we have our coral calliope geraniums calliope geraniums are amazing geraniums they're not your same grandma's geranium they're they're usually a very vigorous grower but you know everything surrounding this geranium here is already vigorous so it's not as quick to grow as the vista petunia and the lime margarita potato vine here so I'm constantly over here when I'm watering controlling so I just kind of take off a couple of the potato vine leaves here and I remove them so it doesn't shade this out because this geranium does get a lot larger the leaves get larger and you can just tell that it hasn't been getting sun we had just gotten back from a vacation up north so you know when someone else is maintaining they don't know these tips and that's okay I don't expect them to maintain while they're watering but that's kind of what happens if it goes a few days without sun it's going to start slowing it down so we want to make sure it gets sun and I love when the vista and the lime potato vine kind of like crisscross in between each other you can see how like it's kind of weaving in through there I love that because then you get like those hot pinks amongst those chartreuse leaves so this is the spot in the example that I wanted to show you with the vista petunia on how like it's kind of flat right here I'm going to back up a little bit so as you can see bubbly and then kind of flat and the reason for this is I believe this is uh from watering when we were gone which is totally fine because you know I did show to water underneath but sometimes on hot days you know we can sometimes just throw the hose where it feels the best and and there it is you know so what I do about these types of spots that happen is you can either cut back and let it fill in but we're already in you know July so that could take a while to fill in or oh look at this piece fell off here see when it starts getting like that then you get pieces that break off okay that's all right so all right so that kind of broke off that piece which kind of alleviated some of that weight that was holding it down right on top there and then I just kind of like bounce up all the other pieces around it kind of just shake it kind of upward a little bit to kind of pop it upward a little bit and then you can kind of see where some of that weight is coming from so I see a vine coming out over here and I'm going to let that one grow because it's kind of heading in this direction so once it's about here I'm going to snip it and then it'll bush out right here and we have a couple of those coming so as you can see there's one right here too I'm just going to go ahead and pinch that off so that way it's going to start doubling in in this little spot here that way it'll fill in this gap as you can see but the positive part that's coming from that gap is allowing this calliope geranium to flourish look at this one this one's looking really good and then when I clean off the geraniums I just kind of go this one could actually stay on because from far away you don't see the little brown bits on the flower but you can just kind of take that all the way down I'm going to get in here for you so we come in all the way down to that stem there and then we just kind of you know crack it off and there we go so when you plant a lot of varieties together in one box it kind of becomes like you know you're you're watching over them to make sure nothing overtakes the other so you're just controlling by removing some of the leaves or the foliage and that really helps you be able to really see all of the different varieties that you've planted in there and it's also okay to just allow it to just go ahead and do its thing too if something gets overtaken and you're fine with that then let it go you know like there's a point in August where I'm no longer going to go in here and just spend time maintaining because I'm going to be busy harvesting and doing other things so at that point it's kind of just on its own as you can see I also snuck in a few blue victoria salvia in there I've actually pinched these twice and they keep like doubling out but then getting like bushier and taller and they actually look really cool in there so I'm really excited to see how it looks once all of them come into blossom and these were ones that I just seeded on my own just to kind of stuff in there for some fillers and a little touch of blue as you can see it's coming down here and growing nice too so now starting to trail but as you can see this one here is getting super long and pretty soon then once it gets super long it'll just hang what we're going to do is just kind of go ahead and give it a nice little pinch there we go I pinched it back to where I wanted it so I didn't do just the tip and then we'll come in and do the same with some of these other ones too we'll keep it nice and full and there they are they're looking real nice and we'll give you an update again soon I hope this video helped you today with maintaining and fertilizing your window boxes and your containers we don't fertilize our food this way this is just for our flowers we keep our food more organic and we actually run that through the injector as well which we'll share in another video soon to come if you like this video don't forget to subscribe and click the bell for notifications and please do give us a thumbs up thank you so much now it's time to go find the champ see you guys later